The Do-Over
by northcaroline
Summary: The next morning, Will wants a second try at his proposal.


Title: The Do-Over  
Series: The Newsroom  
Pairing: Will/Mackenzie  
Rating: T  
Summary: The following morning, Will thinks he needs to try proposing again.

I need more next-morning fic and wedding fic and baby fic! Here's my contribution - now it's everybody else's turn! Please?

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The sun is rising over New York on a cold Wednesday morning. She's waking up slowly, the memories of last night creeping in with the sunlight. There's a warm body curled over and under and around her, eight limbs tangled together in a sleepy mess. They've only been asleep for two hours or so, having spent most of the middle of the night reacquainting themselves with each other's touch.

She's exhausted, but exhilarated at the same time, and life has never felt as good as it does right now.

His eyes blink open, and she kisses him as soon as they do. "Good morning," she whispers.

He sighs in relief. "You're _here_."

She nods quickly, burying her head in his neck and kissing every spot she can reach, punctuating her affection with a string of unconnected words like _always _and _love you _and _fiancé_.

He runs his hands up and down her bare back, relishing in being so close to her. _Who knew it would turn out to be so easy, in the end?_

He stops his lazy exploration and she looks up at him with a question on her face.

He swallows. "Can I … I have a question, but you're going to laugh."

"I won't laugh," she says. He crooks an eyebrow at this, and she swears, "I won't!"

"I'd like to request a do-over."

"A do-over?"

"I didn't have any time to prepare my thoughts last night and I feel like I could've done a much better job at the whole asking thing."

She doesn't laugh – she promised – but she does smile and play with his hair. "It was ultimately successful, though, wasn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but that's not really the point."

"It's _entirely _the point."

"I don't want you to have to tell your parents that I shouted nonsense at you, and somewhere in there you managed to find the words _will you marry me?_"

She opens her mouth to respond, but he interrupts – "I don't want to have to tell our children that I couldn't even get whole sentences out. I talk for a living. It's my area of expertise. I've won awards, Mac."

She touches his face affectionately. "I know."

"And I laid here last night watching you sleep and I've gathered my thoughts and I think I can do it better now."

"Will—"

"So give me your ring."

"My answer's not going to change."

"Better not." He jumps out of bed and pulls his boxers on.

She sighs and relents. "Can I at least put on a shirt?"

"That … that would be a good idea." He trades her engagement ring for a long-sleeved t-shirt from his top drawer. "We gotta go get your clothes later."

"My clothes?"

"All of them. From your apartment. And whatever else you want."

"Slow down before you need a do-over on the moving-in speech."

"I just assumed—" He tugs her out of the bedroom and onto the balcony.

"—that I'd want to live in your bachelor pad?" She shivers. "What are we doing, Will? It's freezing out here."

"Okay, Plan B." He ushers her back inside and flicks the switch to turn the fireplace on. "First of all, we can live wherever you want to live. Here, your place, a new place, Guam. Wherever you are, I will go."

"That's better. And we can live here, that's fine."

"You just said—"

"Well, I didn't want you to assume I wanted to live here, but I don't mind living here."

He takes her hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles. "MacKenzie Morgan McHale," he starts. She smirks, wanting to laugh at him but wanting even more to keep her promise. "I am deeply, insanely, irretrievably in love with you. I love you more than I thought it was possible for me to love another person. Honestly, I didn't think I had the capacity to love like I love you. And I know that we haven't always made each other's lives easy. But what I understand now is that the hardest day with you – and I'm sure we'll have our share of them – is better than the easiest day without you. And after this morning, I'm surer than I've ever been of anything in my _life_ that I don't ever want to not wake up beside you. You make the morning brighter and, MacKenzie, you make _life _brighter."

She's surprised. He's not saying anything she didn't already know and feel in kind, but this is still the man who fired her twelve hours ago. Fundamentally, she knew that this Will had always been hiding somewhere, and prayed she'd be able to find him before her life was over. Having him here, holding her hands and wanting to be with her _forever_ and thinking that _she_ may be the unsure one – it's overwhelming, like having emotional whiplash.

One day, she may get used to having him love her, but that day isn't today.

Her bottom lip trembles as her eyes well up, and he smiles almost apologetically before he drops to one knee in front of her and pulls the ring out of his pocket.

"I forgot this part, too."

"Doesn't that hurt your knee?"

"Shut up, please. No, don't shut up. Forget that part. Just, I'm fine. I love you. MacKenzie, will you marry me?"

Now she laughs. "Yes."

He kisses her right hand before dropping it to take her left and slide the ring back on her finger. "There we go," he says, twisting it back and forth into place, like he can't believe it's actually there. "Now it's official."

"It was official last night, doofus."

"Nope," he says, pulling himself back up to his feet to drop kiss after kiss after kiss on her lips. "I'm going to stick with take two."

She pushes him onto the couch and climbs on top of him, close as she can get and then closer still. "I don't think you get it," she says, threading her fingers through his hair at the temples. God, she loves doing that. How did she resist doing this for so long? She's retroactively proud of herself.

"What you said last night was the most romantic thing I've ever heard."

"No—"

"Seriously. I could see the change on your face. I could see the love in your eyes. I knew you meant the words coming out of your mouth, because you were as surprised as I was that you were saying them. You were perfect. You _are _perfect."

He shrugs a little.

"Well, maybe not perfect," she continues. "No, you're not perfect. But you're perfect for me. I'll never want anything but you and _this_ ever again."

"Me, either." He catches his fingers in the hem of her shirt, pulling her closer.

"So when I tell my parents – and we really should do that this morning, because we told a _lot _of people last night and if my mother hears it from the Internet before she hears it from me, she'll kill us both – I'm going to tell her the first story."

He smiles, convinced, and lets his hands slide under her shirt and over her hips to her back, where he promptly gets distracted and utterly _lost _in her. His lips find hers and he realizes he doesn't _care _what story she tells, or what stories people make up, because this, right here? Is _everything_.

She pulls back after several minutes to tell him, "But you can tell the children whatever you want."

"Oh, I intend to." And then he dives back into her kiss, both of them smiling and laughing because he thinks they just agreed that they're going to have children he can bribe for affection. And there'll be time to think about how scary that is, or how scary it's going to be to talk to MacKenzie's father when they call her parents, or whether they want a big wedding or just a little one. (The way she's kissing him, he doesn't much care what the wedding looks like, as long as it is _soon_.)

For now, he just whispers more _I love you_s to her and listens to her say them right back. And the rest of the words don't matter.

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Reviews are great, but seriously I'd rather you just write your own post-finale fic.


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